[J. Thomas Scharf (1886)] Van Cortlandt's regiment was engaged first against the Hessians and next against a troop of light infantry. " This was one of the longest, warmest and most obdurate battles fought in America.'' 1 " The theatre of action was such that although the combatants changed ground a dozen times in the course of the day, the contest terminated on the spot where it began. It was truly a gallant conflict in which death by familiarity lost its terrors." 2 The hostile armies lay opposite each other until the 7th of October. At the battle of Saratoga, where Burgoyne surrendered on the 17th of October, the Second Regiment under Van Cortlandt, attached to Poor's Brigade, bore themselves with the greatest gallantry.11 In the memoirs of Wilkinson, he states that after the sur-render he was so ill that he had to be placed on a bed in a wagon with Colonel Van Cortlandt, who was in similar case, and both were conveyed to Albany. After his recovery Van Cortlandt joined the main army hutted at Valley Forge. General Clinton applied for the Second Regiment to guard the frontier, where Brant and his Indians were ravaging and destroying, and he wason thisduty din ing the winter of 1778—70. The ensuing spring Van Cortlandt set off with two hundred and fifty men to surprise Brant on the Delaware, but received orders to join Sullivan in Pennsylvania.